A Videogame That Teaches You to Write Poetry, Even if It Intimidates You

[demmiblue]

Source: Wired

Videogames and poetry haven’t always gone hand in hand.

We’re still a long way from Master Chief breaking into a Coleridge soliloquy. But game developers Ichiro Lambe and Ziba Scott have edged us a bit closer to that day with Elegy for a Dead World, a game they Kickstarted in October and released on Steam last month.

Elegy lets players write prose and poetry as they explore distant planets and dead civilizations. The player faces 27 challenges in three worlds, each riffing on a specific British Romance-era poem: “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” by John Keats, and “Darkness” by Lord Byron.

The different challenges find the player in various roles: an emperor rallying his troops before a doomed battle, for example, or a schoolgirl evacuating a city being bombed. Players travel through beautifully designed backgrounds, while on-screen text narrates the story. But much of the text is left blank—that’s when players tap their inner Wordsworths, finishing the tale with their own imaginations.

Throughout their adventure, players are tasked with using several writing styles: Plugging in blanks in prompts like serious Mad Libs, writing poems in rhyming couplets, or going totally freeform.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/elegy-dead-world/

[NV Whino]

1. Well, that sounds cool

Something other than shoot 'em up and blast 'em.

And I find it fascinating that an NRA ad popped up with this op. Wow, I can get a free pocket knife with the annual $25 membership. I'd rather write poetry.

[demmiblue]

2. They are watching you!

The pocket knife is a borg-ploy.

It is a rather neat idea for gamers and non-gamers alike. I would like to know more about it.

[Nevernose]

8. Check out a game called "Valiant Hearts"

It's a WWI game, no killing, virtually no fighting, and I ended up learnng stuff about WWI that I hadn't known before, and i know a lot about WWI.

[demmiblue]

3. YouTube Video:

[kentauros]

4. What if you don't like videogames? Or Poetry?

It's cool for those that need it. I read about it a couple of months ago and didn't read much past the part about it being a videogame. Just not my kind of thing.

[demmiblue]

5. Well, I guess the logical thing to do for someone who dislikes both is to respond to a post that...

includes both subjects of which you dislike!

You did make me laugh, though!

[kentauros]

7. I tried to stay positive!

Though I do believe that a good teacher in any subject can teach anyone in that subject. If I were to take a poetry-writing class from a good teacher, I could probably learn how to not only write it, but like reading it, too

[Baclava]

6. Are there dragons?

I won't play unless there are dragons.....I am the Dragonslayer

[NuclearDem]

11. Take on two Dracolichs and a Magma Dragon at once, then we'll talk.

[Baclava]

12. I maxed out archer atributes in Skyrim

No dragon was safe from my mighty bow...

[Nevernose]

9. One of my favorite assignments is to make kids

Write sonnets. I usually exempt them from the iambic pentameter (ten syllables is fine) and "the turn," but otherwise they have to keep to the rhyme scheme. It's hard, but the kids end up loving it; they get "what the big deal is" about old poetry.

Any old fool can slap some words on a page and call it free verse (and sometimes it's good), but have you ever tried writing a Shakespearean sonnet? It's really freaks hard.

[seveneyes]

10. Every phase has its golden age

The Albatross overhead is only motionless when it is gone.
Life requires living.

[Baclava]

13. - A Thousand Paths to Enlightenment

I tripped over most of them


yea verily